RIP Richard Chamberlain

Farewell To A TV And Film Veteran

The sad news reached us that Richard Chamberlain, who had a very long career on the big and small screen, has just died at the age of 90…

Chamberlain was an actor probably best known for his roles in Richard Lester’s Three and Four Musketeers, disaster movie The Towering Inferno and in the hit TV shows Shogun and The Thorn Birds. Here’s part of Variety’s obituary.

Chamberlain’s All-American matinee idol looks stood in the way of his acting career at times until he proved himself onstage in a highly lauded production of “Hamlet” and other Shakespearean turns. It was not enough, however, to propel him to a major big-screen career. He starred in several notable films including Petulia, The Three Musketeers, The Music Lovers and Peter Weir’s The Last Wave. But his forte continued to be the small screen, where he played everyone from England’s Edward VIII and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald to World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg.

During his years as Dr. Kildare, Chamberlain also enjoyed brief success as a recording artist, mostly romantic ballads. He also used his vocal abilities on TV variety shows and onstage, most notably in the 1993 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady.

But he is best remembered as the ambitious Australian priest in the high-rated TV miniseries adaptation of Colleen McCullough’s weighty romance novel The Thorn Birds.

Shogun, based on James Clavell’s novel, was also a strong miniseries vehicle for Chamberlain in 1980. In the wake of these successes, he commanded top dollar for his television services through to 1996’s sequel to The Thorn Birds, titled The Missing Years.

MGM put the young Chamberlain under contract in the early 1960s and assigned him the role of Dr. Kildare, based on the popular film series that had starred Lew Ayres. The hourlong medical drama, co-starring Raymond Massey, debuted in fall 1961 and was an immediate hit, running through 1966.

Chamberlain’s tall, clean-cut good looks and easy manner made him an instant idol. He used his status to segue into a minor recording career with the 1962 release of Richard Chamberlain Sings and later The Theme From Dr. Kildare. He also appeared on the soundtracks of Twilight of Honor and Joy in the Morning, two MGM soap opera features in which he starred during the early ’60s.

Soon after “Dr. Kildare” ended its run, Chamberlain struck out in different directions. He resumed his acting studies and landed a lead role in the Broadway musical drama “Holly Golightly,” based on Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but it closed before it opened.

For a time he moved to England and continued his studies, making his debut in the title role of “Hamlet” in 1970 at the Birmingham Rep to surprisingly good notices; he was the first American to attempt the troubled Dane on British soil since John Barrymore four decades previous. Chamberlain later transferred the performance to television. He also tackled other theatrical challenges such as Richard II, Cyrano de Bergerac, Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana and Thomas Babe’s Fathers and Sons, drawing Drama Desk nominations for the latter two. During the late ’60s he also starred in a BBC adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady and for director Richard Lester in the film classic Petulia with Julie Christie and George C. Scott.

Also in England he played Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s overheated feature biography The Music Lovers. In 1973 he landed the role of Lord Byron in a feature production of Lady Caroline Lamb, and Lester cast him as Aramis in The Three Musketeers; Chamberlain would later appear in the film’s two sequels.

Also in the mid-’70s, Peter Weir cast Chamberlain in his hallucinatory and apocalyptic “The Last Wave,” and the actor was among the all-star lineup of hit disaster epic The Towering Inferno. He also appeared in disaster film The Swarm and Cinderella tale The Slipper and the Rose.

Thanks to his continuing appeal to TV audiences, he copped the starring role in The Woman I Love (playing King Edward VIII opposite Faye Dunaway’s Wallis Simpson). This 1972 biodrama, which aired on ABC just a few months after Edward’s death, was so controversial that it was banned in the UK. In the mid-’70s Chamberlain toplined a series of popular television movies: The Count of Monte Cristo,F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Last of the Belles and The Man in the Iron Mask, scoring his first Emmy nomination for Monte Cristo.

In 1978 he starred in a PBS adaptation of Neil Simon’s Chekhovian comedy The Good Doctor and was one of the leads in NBC’s epic miniseries Centennial.

NBC’s taboo-breaking historical miniseries Shogun, in which Chamberlain starred in 1980, was one of the highest-rated programs in the network’s history. The show won an Emmy for outstanding limited series and a nomination for the actor; Chamberlain won a Golden Globe for best actor in a television drama for Shogun.

His success with Shogun led to starring roles in weightier fare including Cook and Peary: The Race to the Pole, Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story (another Emmy nom), Night of the Hunter and Casanova. There was also a 1988 ABC miniseries version of The Bourne Identity in which Chamberlain played Jason Bourne. But none of these efforts could compete with 1983’s scandalous The Thorn Birds, in which Chamberlain played a priest who has an affair with a beautiful woman. Despite or because of the controversy, The Thorn Birds became what was then the second highest rated miniseries in history after Roots, and Chamberlain collected another Emmy nom and won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or motion picture for TV.

The miniseries briefly revived Chamberlain’s movie career: He starred in a remake of King Solomon’s Mines and sequel Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. But mostly he worked in TV thereafter with such high-gloss productions as The Lost Daughter, Ordeal of the Arctic, All the Winters That Have Been and 1999’s Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke, in which he starred with Lauren Bacall. There was also the ill-advised 1996 Thorn Birds sequel The Missing Years.

Read the full piece here

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/richard-chamberlain-dead-dies-shogun-thorn-birds-1236351970/